Return From Nakuru...

After the night of sufficient sleep, we awoke to a sunny morning there in Ronda. We walked to the pastor’s house for some breakfast consisting of plenty of tea and some buttered bread (a definite staple regarding breakfast in Kenya). Again I found the television was on, broadcasting some preaching from Mombasa. We watched this for some time and found that even though Sunday School was to begin at 9:00, the pastor did not leave his own house until nearly 10:00. We followed him about half an hour later and found that the church numbers were down to about six or seven as we lost some of the pastors in attendance from the day before.

Service technically began at 10:00 and was said to last until 1:00. Jackson, my traveling companion shared a few words regarding the Prayer of Jabez after about an hour of singing. Fortunately the Prayer of Jabez has not become so commercialized here in Kenya, being displayed upon paper weights, t-shirts, letter openers, coffee mugs, pens, socks, tattoos, belts and the sort as one may find in the USA. This being the case allowed those people to have never heard the concept and they accepted it with open arms.

It was my turn after some more singing to bring the preaching although it was after 12:00 at that point. It seems to me that if the main service doesn’t start until after the noon hour that it should really be considered an afternoon meeting. Nevertheless, not wanted to get caught up in the technical, I brought a message about the all surpassing glory of the Spirit dwelling inside earthen vessels. It was received well, although with a few less ‘amens’ than the previous crowd.

Service ended for the ‘morning’ session and we were told the elders and pastors wanted a meeting before the afternoon session. We met with them in which they presented their requests and desires for the church, things like new instruments (the Kenyan term involving anything to do with the sound system or keyboard) and so forth. I must say that the small meeting place they had merited no need for a sound system as the human voice was strong enough. Nevertheless, the one they had seemed to do the trick and I am sure it will last for some time. Also they wanted some guidance for the sake of evangelism and reaching the community as they knew nothing of the matter. This was certainly an area that will be focused on and after I am gone Jackson will continue to be assisting them in that area.

The afternoon hours passed on and although we desired to leave by 3:30 pm to head back to Nairobi, the church tied us to another session that began abruptly at the 3:30 hour. Due to our need to reach Nairobi before the late hours we moved quickly and I preached a very short sermon on the imminent return of Jesus Christ. The torrential rains subsided just as we finished and by 5:00 we were on our way by the return matatu to Nairobi. As we were boarding our chariot to be carried back home, we noticed a very drunk Masai man who was in the vehicle. He was not just a bit tipsy but terribly drunk and I knew that would make the ride all the more interesting.

Not more than thirty minutes into our journey he began yelling and complaining loudly in Swahili. I learned that he was complaining of having a full bladder. The shouting probably continued for another hour until the driver finally stopped to provide a reprieve to the full bladdered man as well as the passengers affected by his vocal protests. He warned him strongly to keep it down and he did for the next hour or so until his bladder again grew full. He began repeating himself but to no avail, the driver refused to stop.

We were almost in town when the matatu blew a tire and we were forced to stop. The inebriated passenger was convinced the driver stopped on his behalf and after taking care of business told the driver it was time to go. However, at this point the driver was addressing the needs of the tire and within thirty minutes we were back in transit. We reached town and hopped another matatu to bring us back here to Kibera. By 9:00 we were back in our places of domicile, reeling from the wild journeys of the weekend!